Going up to SS7 not only gets you the full performance of your CPU but faster RAM as well. I'd definitely say it's worth it.

Cropping is a strong word. Lowering performance somewhat? Sure. Is it worth it? What are you playing on it? Good SS7 boards are one of the more rare and expensive retro items.

i430TX has better clock-for-clock memory performance than any of the 'Super' So7 chipsets - but that won't offset the much bigger difference due to 50% faster FSB and RAM access.

But...

This is a K6-3, with its own L2 cache at full speed, regardless of bus. That significantly reduces the impact of bus/RAM speeds on performance. Its probably still measurable, most likely not noticeable though.

Instead of shelling out for more hardware, why not try to push this board a bit further. Most i430TX boards are perfectly happy to run at 75MHz FSB, and some will (if your PCI stuff can handle it) do 83MHz too. Running at 75x5 (or x5.5 if CPU can handle 412MHz), even better 83x4.5 (or x5 if CPU can do 415MHz) would reduce the difference a lot, particularly if you can do 5x83=415MHz, which will probably outperform 4x100 on an SS7 board.

I hadn't thought of that, I'll try 6x75,it's rated as a 450mhz and it's a plus chip.

candle_86 wrote on 2020-01-08, 13:12:

I hadn't thought of that, I'll try 6x75,it's rated as a 450mhz and it's a plus chip.

That 'plus' makes it a whole different ballgame 😮

Those will almost all clock to >600MHz, regardless of what the advertised speed is. 83x6=500 should work fine if board & cards can handle it. That said, 100x6 will also work fine (at least, at 2.1V), so it makes a lot more sense to go for a board that supports 100MHz than if you had had a non-plus K6-3, which wouldn't clock past 450MHz...

Oh I kow i had an Epox MVP3C2 board that died spectacularly, it ran this K6-3+ at 600mhz just fine, i just get put off by the $200+ price of the good SS7 boards, this tekram board i found in a dumpster PC with a Pentium 166 Classic inside, and found a beta bios that supported K6-III+. IT just doesn't feel as snappy as it did at 600mhz, but I don't need 600mhz anymore as I've got an Athlon 700 sitting beside it with a Geforce 256 for 9x games, this K6-3 now mainly handles DOS games and some really early 9x games like CivII that just run to fast on that Athlon.

USD 200 for a good SS7 board? Maybe on eBay, but on Amibay or Craigslist you should be able to do better than that... last one I sourced was EUR 25 on our local Craigslist-alternative (a nice Asus P5A).

That said, with an Athlon 700 there's no need whatsoever to boost this one to max performance, in fact I'd say leave FSB at 66MHz anyway to ensure max stability and compatibility. Lack of snappiness in DOS probably isn't CPU-related anyway (as 400MHz is already complete overkill), I'd sooner look to HDD or maybe VGA as culprit instead.

My question though is am I crippling performance at 66mhz fsb.

You are crippling your "preformance" with PCI bus mostly, when it comes to 3D accelerated stuff.

dionb wrote on 2020-01-08, 16:52:

USD 200 for a good SS7 board? Maybe on eBay, but on Amibay or Craigslist you should be able to do better than that... last one I sourced was EUR 25 on our local Craigslist-alternative (a nice Asus P5A).

That said, with an Athlon 700 there's no need whatsoever to boost this one to max performance, in fact I'd say leave FSB at 66MHz anyway to ensure max stability and compatibility. Lack of snappiness in DOS probably isn't CPU-related anyway (as 400MHz is already complete overkill), I'd sooner look to HDD or maybe VGA as culprit instead.

Some P5As are cheaper than average SS7 boards due to K63+ incompatibility.

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-08, 20:21:

[...]

Some P5As are cheaper than average SS7 boards due to K63+ incompatibility.

I doubt it, Asus fanboys tend to push up the price of any board with that logo on it. Furthermore it's a 1.04 with E-rev chipset that works fine with my K6-3+ 😀

dionb wrote on 2020-01-08, 20:28:

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-08, 20:21:

[...]

Some P5As are cheaper than average SS7 boards due to K63+ incompatibility.

I doubt it, Asus fanboys tend to push up the price of any board with that logo on it. Furthermore it's a 1.04 with E-rev chipset that works fine with my K6-3+ 😀

You got a great deal then.

$200+ for a good SS7 board? Hmmmf. Yeah right. I haven't spent more than $50 for an ASUS P5A-B and have quite a few other SS7 boards that I will probably be getting rid of when I thin my collection down.

Maybe people are asking that much, but I would never spend that much for even a P5A or P5A-B.

I've got 3 working P5A-B boards and 2x non-working P5A boards.

Other SS7 boards I have I didn't pay more than $30 a piece for.

Just keep an eye out for good prices.. Don't necessarily look for specific models.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-08, 21:16:

$200+ for a good SS7 board? Hmmmf. Yeah right. I haven't spent more than $50 for an ASUS P5A-B and have quite a few other SS7 b […]
Show full quote

$200+ for a good SS7 board? Hmmmf. Yeah right. I haven't spent more than $50 for an ASUS P5A-B and have quite a few other SS7 boards that I will probably be getting rid of when I thin my collection down.

Maybe people are asking that much, but I would never spend that much for even a P5A or P5A-B.

I've got 3 working P5A-B boards and 2x non-working P5A boards.

Other SS7 boards I have I didn't pay more than $30 a piece for.

Just keep an eye out for good prices.. Don't necessarily look for specific models.

Depends where you are. For me eBay is only real choice. If I lived in Germany otoh...

Personally, I think SS7 is overrated. You get Pentium II levels of performance at best, but the chipset is a lot less stable than 430TX. Also, 430TX is such a mature chipset that there aren't really any hidden issues even with the cheapest boards. With SS7 you can easily get a board that's incompatible with certain AGP cards or certain K6 processors. Just remember that SS7 boards were always a budget product meant for people who couldn't afford a Slot 1 motherboard.

Personally, I would just get a Pentium MMX-233 in that Tekram board and enjoy a very stable system with the added benefit of setmul compatibility (that means you can get your system to 386 levels of performance).

If you need more speed — just go with 440BX and a Pentium III 500-600. K6 will always be slower than that.

My particular SS7 setup is a Tyan AT board of some type with a 500Mhz K6-2+ and 384MB of RAM and honestly, I don't use it and I'd probably part with it.

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-08, 21:22:

Depends where you are. For me eBay is only real choice. If I lived in Germany otoh...

And eBay is where I have gotten all my boards.

Older used computer parts are virtually non-existent locally for me.

Does 430TX come with ATX? I had a look on feeBay they were all AT. Are they much better than the Ali and Via chipsets on most other SS7 boards? I have about 10 S7/SS7 and they are all Ali/VIA.

well ive set it to 75x6 and ill see how stable it is, i thought TX didn't like more than 66mhz, i also think i found the 83mhz setting but it can't complete post

Here is the system specs completed

Tekram P5T30B-4
AMD K6-III+ 450mhz 1.8v rated (Running 6x66=400 and 2.1V), testing 6x75 though now
256mb Crucial CAS3 PC100
Creative TNT blaster 16 PCI
Promise Ultra100 TX2
Soundblaster 128PCI
Intel 10/100 Pro Card
Western Digital WD400BB on Promise Controller running at ATA100
Lite-On DVD-RW IDE on Intel IDE Controller
Windows 98SE

I just find windows 98 to be slow, I can't enable DMA on the HDD it's not an option in the control panel but Windows 98 detects the controller as SCSI so I assume DMA is on anyway, and the slow down isn't disk access waiting slow, just more its slow in general.

candle_86 wrote on 2020-01-08, 05:32:

So I've got my k6-III on a tekram 430tx board with 256mb ram running at 66x6 with a tnt pci. My question though is am I crippling performance at 66mhz fsb. I'm wondering should I drop the cash on a super7 board, ago isn't crucial since I have this tnt, but should I super7 just for 100mhz and instead socket my Pentium classic back on this board?

I have recently switched from using a K6-2 400 at 66x6 to 100x4 after getting an MVP4 motherboard, and the boost I got in memory bandwidth constrained games was substantial even though the change to 3DMark scores did not reflect my perceived performance uplift.

So yeah, you are crippling the system a bit. With a TX chipset you should at least consider running it at 75x5.5.

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-09, 00:31:

Does 430TX come with ATX? I had a look on feeBay they were all AT. Are they much better than the Ali and Via chipsets on most other SS7 boards? I have about 10 S7/SS7 and they are all Ali/VIA.

I have two ATX 430TX motherboards in my collection, they are pretty common.